Advertiser joins legal effort to unseal Alabama execution protocol

A U.S. judge ordered Alabama to preserve death chamber evidence of an aborted execution and be ready to present it at court after lawyers for the condemned man warned his poor health left him with veins unusable for a lethal injection.
Wochit

In September 2017, a doctor hired by Doyle Lee Hamm's legal team reported execution officials would likely have trouble setting an IV due to vein damage from lymphatic cancer.(Photo: Bernard Harcourt)

The Montgomery Advertiser, Alabama Media Group and The Associated Press have filed a joint motion to unseal Alabama's execution protocol on First Amendment grounds.

The motion, filed in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Alabama, seeks to intervene in the case of Doyle Lee Hamm, a death row inmate who walked out of the execution chamber last month after execution officials couldn't find a suitable vein for lethal injection. The Advertiser seeks to unseal certain documents in Hamm's case in addition to the state's general execution protocol.

Alabama halted executions in 2014 after it ran out of pentobarbitol, a sedative used in the execution process. Later the same year, the Alabama Department of Corrections adopted a new three-drug protocol that includes a sedative, a paralyzing agent and potassium chloride, which stops the heart.

Alabama has not released information on how and where it procures its execution drugs. The state has also remained tight-lipped about other protocols and procedures leading up to executions.

"There are few things the citizens of Alabama need to know more than how the state is executing someone," Advertiser Executive Editor Bro Krift said. "Open government is good government."

ADOC officials called off his lethal injection attempt at Holman Correctional Facility shortly before midnight on Feb. 22. ADOC officials said it was a time issue — Hamm's death warrant expired at midnight — but Hamm's legal team say multiple attempts to set an IV in his lower legs and groin led to extreme pain, possible infection and psychological distress.

After the execution, Hamm argued in court the execution attempt amounted to cruel and unusual punishment. His lawyers had previously warned the court his veins were too damaged from medical issues to be access for an IV line.

"Without access to the protocol, it is impossible for the public to understand if the failure was due to a problem inherent in protocol, or to some other cause," the intervention memo states.

On Tuesday, Hamm's lawyer said both parties had reached a settlement and Alabama would not seek a second execution date. The Alabama Attorney General's Office declined to comment on whether or not Hamm was still considered a death row inmate.

"This case concerns a matter of intense public interest: the method by which
the State of Alabama exercises the power to put people to death," the memo states. "Doyle Lee Hamm claimed that executing him under the procedures prescribed by Alabama’s execution protocol would violate the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition on cruel and unusual punishment. Yet the key evidence describing Alabama’s execution
protocol remains sealed and, as a result, the public is unable to fully assess
Hamm’s claim or to evaluate the manner in which it was resolved."